Most are flimsy, thrown-together with uber cheap materials. 

The houses are sold very cheap, however to fix them up, you are usually investing about $30k-$100k to make them livable. 

It's cheap and doesn't give them your house address.

Really cheap to aquire and almost doubles in value after he uses the bobcat to level it out....

Along with that you purchased at a decent price, cheap rates so your mortgage should not be expensive.

It's all about the location, you might be able to buy a cheap house, but if it's in an area with nothing but other cheap houses and in an area that is "not desirable" you're not going to make much money on it, either in improvements or rent.

The list goes on.For mission-critical items, you want quality, not cheap.

@Mike Klarman:  Can you quantify what "not cheap" is? 

Pensacola, FLProperties are pretty cheap.

So I bought a cheap single-family rental in a C location.